Community Voices: Investing in Fall River's workforce development

Friday

May 9, 2014 at 3:08 PM

At People, Incorporated we have developed a strong, civic ethic believing that we have a responsibility as a local business to work together to strengthen our community. Upon my return to the agency in 2003, we embarked upon a focused and collaborative approach to improve the general health of our community, improve the desire of young people to stay in school and to help our adult learners attain more marketable skills.

Robert Canuel

At People, Incorporated we have developed a strong, civic ethic believing that we have a responsibility as a local business to work together to strengthen our community. Upon my return to the agency in 2003, we embarked upon a focused and collaborative approach to improve the general health of our community, improve the desire of young people to stay in school and to help our adult learners attain more marketable skills.

We continue to experience no shortage of criticism about our state as a community but the more important question we all should be asking ourselves is: What can we do about it collectively and creatively?

Our business has grown steadily during the past 12 years and we now employ approximately 650 people, many of whom live in our city. We have become one of the largest employers in the city and must rely on our current and future workforce to continue our growth and success. As business leaders, we must all rely on our abilities to create and sustain quality employees. More importantly to me is how we help our employees continue to strengthen their professional skills and attain even higher academic levels. It is essential to our success and the success of our entire community that we all become better at supporting our educational system and our workforce.

There is no miracle cure. Unless we do better at focusing on solutions instead of recriminations, we will be having the same discussions 10 years from now about the inadequacy of our educational system and workforce.

We have historically had a large number of employees begin their career with us in entry-level positions. Often, these people have come to us armed with only a high school diploma or a GED certificate. We realized that we had a responsibility to give our employees better tools to succeed even if it meant that giving them these tools, they may move on to a better paying job elsewhere. We realized that we had to pay them a better wage for their efforts, provide educational assistance in the form of tuition reimbursement and scholarships, and we also realized that we had to do a better job at creating career ladders to get them to stay at our agency and in our community. At People, Incorporated, we have done just that.

It has been a 12-year experiment in creative leadership with a healthy level of respect for the people that are the backbone of our business model. Every business has the potential to do more for their present and future workforce and should. Complacency will yield the same results we have grown accustomed to.

We are now able to compensate entry level employees with a livable wage that is one of the best in our industry. We have established clearly articulated career ladders for most of our employees, and a part- or full-time employee at our agency can obtain a college degree for free.

We have accomplished this because we made the commitment to do so, because we thought that complaining without finding a solution was a waste of intellectual energy. We did not accept that we were unable to change these dynamics and because it made good business sense, at the same time, it helped our citizens change their lives for the better.

What if every employer in the city (for-profit and non-profit) with a workforce of more than 100 employees formed an association partnership with Bristol Community College, the Fall River Office of Economic Development, and the Chamber of Commerce to target emerging industries for focused training for their existing employees, which in turn would help to attract new businesses to our community? Existing employees would gain new skills and entry-level openings could emerge for replacement jobs.

What if various agencies pooled their considerable resources to target workforce development as this community’s number one priority? What if every non-profit agency in the area focused more energy into helping our schools have more school-based community centers to strengthen family stability and educational attainment? People, Incorporated is currently working on opening our second school-based community center, and we welcome anyone who wishes to join this venture.

What if our elected officials worked in unity to bring more targeted revenue into the city of Fall River for the expressed purpose of workforce development?

What if we just try some new ways of working together?

Robert Canuel is president and CEO of People, Incorporated, Fall River. Community Voices is a weekly column featuring experts and specialists from the community.